Newsletter

Three wrong-way drivers arrested in Athens in single day

Librada Gonzalez-Diaz

Jacqueline Bray Briggs

Leonardo Diaz

A third motorist was arrested in Athens on Thursday for driving on the wrong side of the road, after nearly colliding with a police patrol car.

The arrest, which was made shortly before 5 p.m., came after the Athens Banner-Herald reported that two other motorists were arrested earlier in the day for driving the wrong way on divided highways. One was drunken woman whose car was headed toward a police patrol car on the Athens Perimeter.

The third incident happened as an Athens-Clarke officer responded to a complaint about a suspicious person on Chesterton Drive, police said. As the officer rounded a corner on Jefferson River Road, he saw an SUV driving straight at him while illegally passing a tow truck.

The officer slammed on his patrol car’s brakes, and the vehicle drove off the roadway and nearly collided with a mailbox, according to police.

After the motorist maneuvered her SUV around the patrol car, the officer saw the woman “throw her hands up in the air and continue driving down the road,” he wrote in the arrest report. He gave chase and caught up to the SUV at the intersection of Brockett Drive and Sidney Lanier Avenue, where he pulled the vehicle over.

The driver, 39-year-old Librada Gonzalez-Diaz, told the officer she was in a hurry to get medicine for a sick child, police said.

She was charged with driving on the wrong side of the road, reckless driving, driving without a license and two counts of improper passing.

The first wrong-way incident happened about 2:15 a.m. Thursday, when an officer was driving on the Athens Perimeter near the Old Hull Road overpass and saw a car traveling toward him in the same lane, police said.

After moving over to let the car pass, the officer made a U-turn and pulled the car over. He noticed an odor of an alcoholic beverage as soon as 64-year-old Jacqueline Bray Briggs rolled down her window, according to police.

“I asked Briggs if she knew that she was traveling on the wrong side of the road and she said, ‘Yes,’” the officer wrote in the arrest report.

Briggs, who lives on Fowler Mill Road in Bogart, told the officer she was on her way home from a friend’s house, where she only had two drinks, police said.

The woman failed roadside sobriety tests and was unable to keep her balance while standing, but refused to submit to a breath test, police said.

She was charged with DUI and reckless driving.

Less than 10 minutes later, at 2:22 a.m., police received a 911 call about a car driving on the wrong side of Atlanta Highway traveling east from Georgia Square Mall.

An officer spotted the car as it passed the John Deere dealership near the Epps Bridge Parkway overpass, and followed it into the parking lot of Beech Haven Baptist Church on West Broad Street, police said.

While that officer followed the car around the back of the church, another officer blocked the car as it came from around the building, police said.

The driver, 21-year-old Leonardo Diaz of Winterville, briefly resisted arrest and officers took him to the ground to handcuff him, according to police.

The arrest report did not mention any involvement of drugs or alcohol, but an officer wrote that “it was obvious” Diaz had some kind of issue, which was redacted from the report.

“(Diaz) seemed confused at times and amused at others,” an officer wrote in the arrest report. “He mumbled to himself and seemed to be having a kind of profanity-laced conversation with someone.”

Diaz was unable to explain why he was driving on the wrong side of the highway, police said.

He was charged with reckless driving, driving on the wrong side of the road and, because it was lightly raining at the time, driving too fast for conditions, police said.